Published by Alessandro Violante on August 22, 2017
It’s now self-evident how the so called techno industrial genre is experiencing an important revival, although the result of this “exchange” or, if you prefer, of this melting pot of two different and, at the same time, similar music genres and (sub)cultures, isn’t always so convincing. One of the reasons why these two worlds have once again met each other is the recent rediscovery of the work and the aesthetics of U.S.A.-based super-group Underground Resistance, a phenomenon which has been out of the spotlights for several decades, obfuscated by the broad success of European techno music, from which several subgenres and other subcultures were developed. It could be insteresting to investigate why it has not happened before and why it happened now, but this is not the right place to do it.
When Supersimmetria joined HANDS recently, even the German rhythmic noise label started to produce this kind of albums, just like with Armando Alibrandi first album Kosmogonie, althought it belongs more to dark techno than to techno industrial. Then, the last EP and the last album made by the Spanish musician Geistform was released, and then again an EP made by Ancient Methods, the debut album by Tomohiko Sagae, and the one by New Frames. Let’s not forget anyway that Orphx, true pioneers of the genre, released most part of their albums under Udo Wiessmann‘s label.
Although Richard Oddie and Christina Sealey have always mixed techno and industrial together, what’s happening now is also a social meeting of two different ways of living the “club culture”. People who in the past used to listen to “classic” and minimal techno, started listening to techno industrial artists, and the opposite happened in the post-industrial scene.
New Frames debut Resistance Through Rituals is a result of this process of exchange. New Frames are a duo run by well-known electronic musician known as The Panacea and by his colleague David Frisch. In the past, The Panacea had already released some albums under HANDS, using the moniker Squaremeter. In these albums, both Berlin techno music trademarks and Detroit political approach can be found.
Resisting through rituals means sharing the same music in the same place as a political and critical act of resistance towards the system and the status quo, but it also has a critical meaning towards the “inclusive” nature of the European techno scene, being the Detroit scene “exclusive”. Think about the critical statements of Jeff Mills towards people dancing to his music, to better understand the difference between these two philosophies.
Almost all songs are quite long. Within them, the rhythm endlessly repeats itself, as if it was an hypnotic mantra, generating in the listener a sort of tribal ritual. The Panacea and Frisch look with renewed curiosity to the sounds belonging to early techno music, reinterpreting them and making them still sounding fresh, while building long suites upon which the sounds added to the rigid bassdrum change along their length.
There’s an absence of melodic elements and few pauses. There are the hard beat and the industrial sounds of Farewell legacy, the heaviest song of the album, and there’s the almost-dub rhythm of Artefakt (with Henning Baer), a slower song preceded by Cloud of light disconnect, which opens the album with a rhythm which slowly grows until it reaches a climax in its slightly syncopated nineties-derived beat.
Give us guidance and Shorten the days break the spell of the four-on-the-floor, alternating sounds and less granitic beats, while Eternal body has something in common with the more recent Geistform releases. We go public by way of the Net has more acid sounds. Although Resistance Through Rituals is a good collection of interesting songs, they express themselves at their best live, as they have recently have shown at the FORMS OF HANDS, using many influences and vaguely dark ambient atmospheres.
To quote Bernard of Chartres, Resistance Through Rituals is the result of “dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants”. Their album is a solid update of classic techno sound, the result of a process we’re experiencing in current industrial music. Not a copy, nor a particularly original album, but a good reinterpretation.
Label: Hands Productions
Rating: 8